"I wait beside these poems with a kind of heart-listening. And it feels right to acknowledge that although I am working on the words of an enlightened being, I am not one. If I were in the station of Rumi and Shams, I'd probably be spontaneously making my own anonymous poetry. I'm not a cook, more a strangely elated waiter bringing out dishes. I hope I am able at times to be the empty screen on which Rumi's joy and grief can play. These poems are beyond me. That's why I love working on them. They draw me where I have to go."